Known examples of a conventional communication apparatus of this type are a facsimile apparatus for communicating image data and a Telex for communicating character code data.
However, the facsimile apparatus can communicate only image data, and the Telex can communicate only character code data. For this reason, when data including both image and character code data is to be transmitted, data communication efficiency is degraded because the character code data is transmitted as the image data.
In order to eliminate the above drawback, image data and character code data may be divided into different block areas so that the respective block areas can be transmitted independently of each other, to thereby improve data communication efficiency. However, some image data, e.g., halftone image data and color image data, have a variety of image characteristics. Therefore, if such image data is communicated as one block, an image data amount is increased or image data processing is complicated, resulting in poor communication efficiency.